electrical wiring deficiency?

My gas dryer stopped working and since it was about 20 years old I thought nothing of it. (The dryer wouldn't start--it only made a buzzing noise).

Anyway I had a new dryer delivered and the same problem happened! The dryer people said the new dryer was defective and said they would deliver a new one.

My question is could the electrical outlet somehow not be delivering enough juice to start the dryer? I find this hard to believe since my old dryer was on this very same outlet for years with no problem. The outlet is hooked up to an old panel that has breakers. Wouldn't a breaker have tripped if there was a problem?

Note: my house is old and the dryer is on the same circuit as other things. I also tried plugging in the dryer to another circuit with the same result.

Normally a dryer is a 220V appliance -- how did you plug in the test stuff? I'd first check to make sure you've got 220V across the 2 legs coming in. If only one leg is good (bad breaker, maybe), a lamp, drill, etc., would work OK if plugged into that side of the dryer receptacle, but the dryer itself certainly wouldn't heat up, and might have problems starting the motor. I'll see if I can find a circuit diagram of a "typical" dryer to check this.

You can have a circuit with a bad connection that will show that there is the correct voltage if there is no load, but will not conduct enough current to run the motor. The only way to check that is to measure the voltage when there is load on the circuit.

You can usually (but not always) check it by measuring the voltage on the unused element of a duplex receptacle when the load is plugged into the first outlet.